How to move LibreOffice customizations from Xubuntu 18.04 to Xubuntu 22.04

[ralphl]

I just installed Xubuntu 22.04 with LibreOffice 7.3.3.2 moving from Xubuntu 18.04 (latest LibreOffice for that system). I still have 18.04 on my computer in a separate partition, but it doesn’t run. I would like to move all my customizations from 18.04 to 22.04. These include toolbar customizations, templates, macros, and maybe some other settings I don’t remember. How can I do this???

[Hrbrgr]

Have you made a backup of your user profile before?

Backing up the user profile at regular intervals

[RobertG]

If there is a separate home directory for 18.04:

• open this directory

• go to .config/libreoffice/4

• copy folder 4 to your new home directory, .config/libreoffice/

All you have changed in LibreOffice will be saved in this folder, if you didn’t save, for example, macros separately or macros in files you created. Tools → Options → LibreOffice → Paths will show the same folder.

[ralphl]

Thank you for responding. Both the response from Hrbrgr and you were very helpful. I copied the folder as you suggested and everything worked, except for one item. In my old 18.04 system I had a templates folder in /home/ralph. Now every time I start writer from the whiskers (start) menu, I get an error message that writer can’t find a particular template in /home/ralph/Templates. Of course, it is never going to find it, because it is on another disk partition. But I don’t know why writer wants it, because I am not opening an existing document. I went to Paths and I have no path to /home/ralph/Templates. What could be causing the strange behavior and how might I fix it???

[ralphl]

Thank you for responding!! Your reference to Preventing data disaster - The Document Foundation Wiki was very helpful and I learned a lot about how libreoffice is configured helping me solve my problem. However, I still have one problem. See my response to @RobertG. Any help is appreciated…

[RobertG]

@ralphl

Now every time I start writer from the whiskers (start) menu, I get an error message that writer can’t find a particular template in /home/ralph/Templates.

What is the content for Tools → Options → LibreOffice → Paths → Templates? Should be in your home directory an then .config/libreoffice/4/user/template.
Open this directory with a file manager. Is there any link inside this folder, which tries to connect to /home/ralph/Templates?
Does the error appear with old Writer documents or does it appear for every new Writer document?

[Hrbrgr]

Have a look at the post by @ajlittoz :

Update styles in a template based on a derived file?

It is likely that your templates are not correctly “integrated” into LO (specifically Writer here). There are two ways to use templates. quick’n’dirty method You double-click on an .ott file. This creates a fresh .odt with initial content (text and styles) coming from the .ott but Writer immediately forgets the origin. The document is not linked to the template and any modification will not be forwarded to the document. template known by Writer This requires a preparatory phase where th…

[ralphl]

Guys, thanks again for responding so promptly. I really appreciate it, especially when I seem to be facing so many issues, when installing a new OS. I solved the problem. Under 18.04 I had my default template stored in /home/ralph/Templates. Apparently this file location is stored someplace, I don’t know where, but got picked up by libreoffice in 22.04. All I had to do was bring up writer, go to File>Templates>Manage Templates>Manage>Reset Default Text Document, and writer no longer wanted a template in /home/ralph/Templates. Now it is on to my Firefox scrollbar problems.
Thanks again for your help.